Drawings from my sketchbooks & snippets of my recent work

Our first Master of the Month for the 2017-2018 school year will be Jack Kirby. He was the co-creator of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and more. He would have been 100 years old this month. Kirby introduced Captain America with a political statement. The titular hero punched Hitler in the face nine months before the United States entered World War II. American Nazis hated that cover. “Pick a lamppost,” they told him, “Because you’ll hang from it when Hitler arrives.” Kirby was stouthearted. Once, while he was in the Timely Comics office, he received an angry call from someone in the lobby. The caller threatened Jack with bodily harm if he showed his face. Kirby told the caller he would be right down, but by the time Jack reached street level, there was no one there. “The only real politics I knew,” Jack Kirby said, “was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it.”